Tweak by Nic Sheff
With the release of Beautiful Boy, starring Timothée Chalamet and Steve Carell, I had to read Tweak, the memoir written by Nic Sheff, a former methamphetamine addict. His father, David Sheff wrote his own memoir, Beautiful Boy, about dealing with Nic’s addiction.
While the movie focuses on the father-son relationship, using Nic’s cycle of rehab and relapse as a vehicle to show how far a father will go to help his son while setting boundaries to protect the rest of their family, Tweak recounts Nic’s addiction and how it has affected his relationships—familial, romantic, and platonic.
Nic started using in high school and has abused many different substances, mostly heroine and crystal meth. Tweak starts when Nic is 18 months sober but quickly follows Nic as he couch surfs between friends’ and girlfriends’ homes after leaving his own, where he is unable to use drugs. Very quickly, Nic gets caught up in using and selling drugs—rather, using the drugs more than selling them. He and a friend, Gack, work together in the business, learning the shady tactics used against them by other sellers in the area. This forces them to move to other territories, where they can be trusted suppliers, though this always seems to fall through, whether because they are so short on cash or because they use all of their supplies.
The boys are so hooked on crystal that they skip meals to afford their addiction. However, when Nic realizes he has run out of money and has no place to stay, he considers going back home, knowing he will have to go back into rehab. His girlfriend, Lauren, offers to go into rehab with him if he will only stay with her. Nic knows he will relapse with Lauren around, so he gives in and moves back to his dad’s place.
Rehab. Runs back to LA. Relapse. No, Nic doesn’t relapse this time. He connects with his sponsor, Spencer, who has a wife and kids. They take in Nic like a family member, making Nic feel a part of something so wonderful. He is set up with a job as a receptionist at a salon. Nic constantly reflects on how grateful he is for this life. And when Spencer experiences a medical emergency, Nic is struck by how fragile life is.
Over a year of sobriety. Relapse. Another girlfriend named Zelda. Uses. Sells. Uses. Disappointment. Dread.
Tweak is no sugarcoated memoir. Nic was a drug addict. His story is rough and raw and hits rock bottom multiple times. While the movie, Beautiful Boy, focuses on the father-son strain, Tweak is all about the inner workings of Nic’s thoughts, depression, love, lust, and addiction. The reader steps into the mind of an addict, where thoughts are scattered and cyclical and harnessed by the need to use. There is no beauty in addiction. But there is hope, grace, forgiveness, and love.
Find Tweak: Growing Up on Methamphetamines here.
My Lesbian Experience with Loneliness & My Solo Exchange Diary by Nagata Kabi
As graphic memoirs are trending, especially ones written and drawn by webcomic artists, Nagata Kabi’s My Lesbian Experience with Loneliness and her sequel, My Solo Exchange Diary, stand out as queer stories with quite a bit of frankness. Kabi does NOT hold back when discussing her bouts of anxiety, sexual frustrations, awkward and unhealthy familial bond, and of course loneliness. These books illustrate Kabi’s experience as an adult navigating life as a Japanese college dropout living at home with her parents.
Living at home as a 28 year old may not be anyone’s dream, but sometimes that’s where life drops us. After leaving college, Kabi tries to hold down part-time jobs, but her anxiety and depression get in the way. She can’t seem to get out of bed on most days or even eat, spiraling Kabi into a terrible eating disorder. She loses her sense of self, which to Kabi means having security, direction, and purpose. But most importantly, she cannot find a sense of belonging.
Without knowing who she is and where she’s supposed to be, Kabi wallows in grief, disrupting her stability and further disappointing her parents, who seem to only care about Kabi getting a full-time job. Through this, Kabi also deals with loneliness and a lack of physical intimacy. Therefore, Kabi seeks a lesbian escort agency, but when she meets with the escort, it’s not what Kabi expects. She isn’t “cured” in any way but instead plagued with more questions about the way she doesn’t communicate with people outside of her family, fostering a rather Freudian attachment to her mother.
My Lesbian Experience with Loneliness not only focuses on Kabi’s sexual repression and awakening but mostly her journey toward self-awareness and self-love, digging her way out of the hole of mental illness, and gaining independence. This is also the case in My Solo Exchange Diary, in which Kabi discusses the aftermath of putting out her debut manga into the world and what’s happening during and post-publication. The reader is privy to the artist’s struggles of creating My Solo Exchange Diary, which is pretty cool and meta.
In the sequel, Kabi works toward communicating with past friends and trying to separate herself from her parents, particularly her mother, who falls ill. Kabi is still dealing with many of the same pains as she does in the first book, which may seem redundant but rings true to life. Kabi moves out, but quickly moves to another apartment, and then moves back in with her family. She recognizes this cycle as similar to the one when she couldn’t hold down a job. Soon, she realizes what responsibility, independence, and unhappiness really means for her.
Throughout this book, Kabi struggles with her relationship with her mother. She wants to be independent but is really reliant on her and wants to please both parents. Her mother even calls Kabi’s debut, My Lesbian Experience with Loneliness, something to be ashamed of. At the same time, Kabi is still struggling with loneliness, being 29-years-old and having never kissed someone she likes and likes her in return. The idea of loving and being loved is the new aspect in the sequel. Kabi’s quest to find this in a friend she is reunited with, the same lesbian escort agency, and a new acquaintance is the refreshing newness the sequel needs to not be overly repetitive of the first book. Kabi begins to understand her loneliness and the need to love oneself in order to boost her self-esteem. While she still struggles with anxiety and depression, she overcomes some of her ill-fated thoughts of herself. This book is about the journey toward finding oneself in the midst of success yet impending loneliness.
Nagata Kabi has a unique way of illustrating her battles with mental health, particularly in the way she often draws the person she wants to be and a persona of her mind telling her to do whatever it takes to please her parents. There are many images of this persona literally holding back another Kabi, who is reaching for something far away. Kabi also uses black and pink strokes against a white background to illustrate the doom she feels inside her head. Kabi’s images are often literal depictions of philosophical or mental states of anxiety and dilemmas. They are coupled with big, harsh dialogue bubbles (more like large spiky things to emphasize her inner screaming) that describe her thoughts. She isn’t afraid to overuse ALL CAPS AND EXCLAMATION POINTS!!! when illustrating these thoughts, which makes the comic authentic to Kabi’s actual mental state. While the constant usage of these techniques and her setbacks are redundant, this rings true to the side effects of depression and anxiety. Sometimes it feels like one is in a constant state of doom or in a cycle one cannot escape. This book makes the reader experience that nature, which becomes somewhat frustrating, thus perhaps eye-opening to these mental health problems.
Both of Kabi’s books are self-reflective in nature, including narrative commentary from the present Kabi about her past thoughts and emotions. She often says things like, “Later I would learn…” or “Now I know…” The reader is engaging with the musings of the creator, which is not unique to graphic memoirs but gives the reader the idea that one is always learning. And now that this is a series with another book set to be published in 2019, the reader is left wondering how Kabi is doing now and what has developed in her outlook on life and the progress she is making for herself.
Find My Lesbian Experience with Loneliness and My Solo Exchange Diary here.
The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck by Mark Manson
Just what I need at the moment: to not give a single fuck but to do so subtly! After hearing the hype around Mark Manson’s The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck, I knew I had to find out how to not give a fuck because my life is a clusterfuck. Though, Manson would consider me seeking and then reading this book as giving a lot of fucks about fuck giving, pulling me into what he calls the Feedback Loop from Hell, because my actions to seek self-help or guidance acknowledges and focuses on the fact that I am lacking in something and am eager to find it—a chill pill.
Manson’s self-help book is full of paradoxes, but once you think about what he’s saying, some of it actually makes sense, like how self-help books mainly emphasize what you lack. Like I said, the existence of this book is itself a paradox because it emphasizes how I care too much about too many things or that I care about the wrong things, my priorities not aligning with my values.
For many situations in which we find ourselves caring too much or in desperate need of escape, Manson uses the “backwards law,” coined by philosopher Alan Watts, which basically points out how we get the opposite result we desire or generate even more problems from doing what would logically, on the surface, make sense. With this law, Manson frankly explains how exactly our actions backfire on us and what we should do instead.
The main topics Manson covers are: the values and metrics (standards) by which we measure ourselves, taking responsibility for what happens in our lives even if what happens is not our fault (how we interpret and respond to events, and how we use our own victimhood), being comfortable in uncertainty and being wrong in order to seek answers in order to grow, seeing your failures and problems as mundane which would make them seem less overwhelming, seeing action as progress even if it results in failure, and accepting our mortality and ridding ourselves of entitlement / do-nothing victimhood in order to refocus our values and priorities to match our actions.
Manson’s The Subtle Art of Giving a Fuck is fun and funny and blunt. Give this book a read if you’re willing to try to understand a different way of thinking, the “backwards law,” so you may reconsider the way you act in various situations, during which you are confronted by questioning your values and standards. This isn’t the book that will tell you how to keep your life in order or how to fix everything in your life. This book will help you figure out what to give a fuck about.
Find The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck here.
Queer: A Graphic History by Meg-John Barker and Julia Scheele
Meg-John Barker’s Queer: A Graphic History is very properly named. With comic illustrations by Julia Scheele, Barker provides an overview of the history of queerness, citing many players involved in queer activism and queer theory. This book is best used as a reference book or a springboard to delve into the many, many avenues queerness has taken over the years. I especially think it’s a good book, in an academic sense, for an introduction to queer theory, or queerness, or gender/sexuality studies. Readers and students can learn a lot from specific pages and then launch into their own research from there. In addition, Barker provides a Resources section of her research as well as other resources that may be helpful. As for a cover-to-cover read, well, there’s a lot to take in.
First, Barker defines the word queer and its use as different parts of speech, including a noun, verb, and adjective. What’s important here is how scholars and people queer an idea, or turn an idea around, twisting it into something different or strange or something one hasn’t thought of before, which can bring about change and positive thinking.
Barker then breaks down the differences between identity politics and queer theory; gender, sex, and sexuality; nature and nurture; and sex and gender. Most important here is the shift in the notion that the meaning of sexuality went from one of behavior to one of identity based on attractions and sexual preferences. To cover these topics, Barker along with Scheele provide a detailed yet concise overview of queer theory and activism (the gay rights movements similarities to black feminism and the struggles of multi-marginalized peoples) as well as key figures and thinkers in conversation with one another.
To make these ideas more accessible to the reader, Barker and Scheele put these ideas in cartoons and pop culture references. Barker claims queer theory is known to be hard for most people to understand and is full of multiple binaries to diffuse the idea of binaries, thus making itself contradictory and making it inaccessible to the common person, which is why it has not been as widely recognized as other fields of study. Barker concludes with the hope that this book makes the introduction to queer theory and queerness a bit easier to grasp, which it can when taken in small doses, like a reference book. Whether or not this book is successful is in how the reader uses the book and their explorations from there.
Find Queer: A Graphic History here.